Pages

Monday, May 26, 2014

The school year is just a little over a month again and it's just starting to kick in that I'm actually somehow doing this ALT thing again for another year. And when the weight of reality hits me like this (as it did at the beginning of every term last year) I start getting the dark thoughts and weirdo retroversion to 15 year old angst. So maybe writing about the positive things in my life will help me?

Today I had a good day!

It was a rare "work day" for me, which oddly (in my company's lingo) means I have no work scheduled for the day haha. And even rarer, it was a work day for my friend, so we met up at the Laforet in Harajuku and hit up Urahara for a while.

There's always a bunch of cool looking guys leaning against the railing in front of Laforet. I watch them and think any second some cute girl is gonna come trouncing along and they'll run off to lovingly shove crepes into their orifices but it's only ever guys meeting guys. what ru doin japan.

We went to a well-concealed Taiwanese shaved ice place called MangoChaCha!

Memories of the ice cream shop I worked in for 3 days in high school come flooding back.

Points for prettiness, and it did have the weird sensation of eating a rain cloud. You know, all soft and fluffy yet dense with moisture?

I am terrifying.

Afterwards we went on a shopping tour of lots of cute tiny little shops selling pop clothing along the streets. This shop (Romantic Standard) was super cute. I might go back after payday and buy a t-shirt with a picture of Jesus and Mary in space on it.

Another bizarre thing you see in Harajuku all the time. ↗︎ Me taking photos of myself no, Random lines of people waiting for pancakes. I swear every time you come across a random line of people waiting on some back alley, there is a pancake shop nearby. Again what ru doin japan.

Went back to the Deal Design here for the first time in a million years. This place holds the best memory to me of when I was at Waseda and a friend and I went in here and I bought a chain and pendant ON A WHIM. We looked at it and priced it and told the guy I'd think about it and went away and spent the next hour in McDonalds talking about how he definitely knew I wasn't going to come back and buy it and that's why I had to prove him WRONG by going back and buying it. So I did. And then we all chatted about the GazettE for a while and it was awesome. Thinking about that still makes me grin. :)

I terrifyingly might go back and purchase a pendant here for 15000 when I get paid, too, depending on the outcome of PIERROT tickets. Despite needing to pay for the bills I haven't paid in a month. Despite needing to buy a damn table. Despite wanting to move so bad it hurts and needing to save for the fee. Despite basically everything.

Thursday, April 10, 2014

Hi, there! Long time no blog. I keep meaning to come back and blog here, but it feels like blogger is just so isolated from my other social media outlets (not that I'm super active on those), so in a way it feels pointless. But if I'm writing for myself then what does it matter, eh? Yea, let's go with that.

The New Years Resolutions of last post, hm. Well, I definitely haven't kept up with the writing, and I haven't been incredibly explorative (word?). As for thinking positively; I'm not sure if it was the rush of the school year ending, all the alcohol, or just the cycle of unhappiness lifting, but I think I've been doing better on this one. :3

What have I been up to lately? Not so much...

Going drinking with friends, mostly. We had an epic string of Friday nights, that have become more randomised since spring break started.

Random wandering and drinking in Shinjuku. This^ is a magical taiyaki we bought in front of Studio Alta. It's anko paste inside of croissant bread instead of the usual taiyaki cake-like bread. Super delicious and only 200 yen if you're over there. (Watch out, though, the line gets massive.)

My friend trying to get a better picture of the sign. Haha

To add to the heaps of (unhealthy) drinking, got a magical bottle of Moet & Chandon as a gift from my friend. Drank this a few weeks later and had an epically hungover day at work. :/

Happiness is not a warm gun. (We were in the HUB, btw; random white girl in the bg.)

Another random thing I'm enjoying too much these days is graffiti and sticker art around Shibuya. Live house staircases and bar walls.

If my life could just look like this. ^

This one from a staircase of a rock bar where we ended up going to randomly watch an air guitar competition. There was an MC and he would introduce the acts, who would each get up on the tiny stage and pretend to rock out to a song. The most epic was this older guy in a suit and a fedora. To look at him you would have thought he was a normal salaryman with a penchant for headgear, but when his song started he went wild. It was simultaneously one of the most impressive and hilarious things I've seen in my life (there's a list I've got going of those, I kid you not).

These pictures are from a while ago, though. I've had my hair cut since then...

This one with my hair up. It was really quite long.

New length around my chin, and maybe a little fuller and longer than I would like in the back.

One of my friends convinced me to try his salon in Omotesando, where all of the salons charge you out the bleep, because I guess he wanted to be helpful, so I tried it out. However, I don't know about you, but in my experience, I can tell if I'm going to like my haircut pretty much as soon as I meet the stylist. This may be some psychological result of my interaction with a person I don't quite find reliable or some nonsense, however this has generally been true my entire life. One of the best haircuts I ever had was given to my by one of my college roommates, and she was not in the least a trained professional. Anyway, I haven't quite enjoyed the cut itself, but it's been so nice to have it short, that I've been able to over look it. :)

I'm also a bit homesick lately. Not quite sure what that's about. It might because I caught the flu over my break and have been forced to spend a lot more time than I would have liked laying in bed and watching youtube videos. I never really thought about it when I lived in the US, because it was normal there, and even years of living here in Japan it was never an issue to me, but life in the US is really kind of ballin'. Driving around in cars, eating Doritos, cocktails that taste worth enjoying, wearing huge sunglasses without people thinking you're the biggest douche bag on the planet and/or a tourist... It's weird to me that this is my idea of ballin'.

Wednesday, January 1, 2014

Happy 2014, everybody! Just finished watching Kathy Griffin making Anderson Cooper crazy uncomfortable while the ball dropped over here. Actually didn't have a very exciting new years celebration here, so we'll skip that. I'm interested, what's your new years resolution for 2014?

As I wrote on twitter, I came home on the 21st. My mum decided at the last minute that since I had so much unscheduled time over the holidays she would just buy a ticket and ship me home, so home I came. (Granted I did miss Plastic Tree, the GazettE, Sendai Kamotsu, and Angelo lives respectively.)

My connecting flight from San Francisco was balls awful, btw. Seven hour layover on a 9 and half hour flight with no sleep (and not a penny on me to buy a water or anything while I waited). Then the actual connecting flight to Atlanta was super turbulent and I got sick. Never want to repeat this experience if possible.

Jet lag has also been a bit off this time around. Usually I'm snoozing by 9pm and up reading or drawing with a coffee by 5am during my first week or so, but this time it's been opposite. Sleep kicks in around 5am and then I'm up and at it around 1pm.

Anyway, I got home just in time to get in the mood and celebrate Xmas with the fam. Which mainly consists of me drinking at any and every possible occasion.

I hope everyone had a very Merry Xmas and got lots of great things! My real present this year (to myself, lol) was my MacBook. So from Santa this year I got a few bucks to put toward covering it as I continue to pay it off over the next couple of months. I did get some other lovely things, though...

Yay! These converse aren't as blatantly red as they appear; they're actually kind of pink. I adore them! I've been wearing them out every day since I got them. I also got some Ciate nail polish in yellow with a vial of these colourful sprinkle-like beads in different colours to accent. It's strangely Eastery, though, haha.

Also, since I told my family I wanted nail polish, my sister assembled this for me...

12 bottles of nail polish and my facial moisturiser from Origins! She literally just went into the store and picked every shade she would never wear in a million years and got it, haha.

I also got a furry hat, some lotion, and a portable DVD player thing (which I will hook up to a TV and use as an actual DVD player, haha). Hope you guys got some good stuff too!

Anyway, I have to be honest and say I haven't really enjoyed this trip home like I thought I would. It's been sort of a bitter pill for me, especially after my good friend from Waseda came to hang out and drink with me the night before I headed back. I feel like every time I remember why I loved living in Japan, lately, reality sort of punches me in the face soon after. It's difficult to explain and I know it's mostly psychological and probably just a part of growing up, but... Growing up sucks.

I guess I'm sort of in a place right now where I don't feel like I belong anywhere. I know I don't belong in Japan, Japan is for the Japanese and I feel like it will always be that way. I also see very clearly that I don't belong back here where I grew up, but that's not really surprising, since I never really felt like that when I lived here either.

Which brings me to the point of this entire post (aside from wishing you season's greetings and showing off my pretty things): New Years Resolutions.

I've never been big on them, but I'm hoping to give it a real go with three resolutions I'm going to try to make good on. After all, can one really improve without setting some sort of goal to improve toward?

_________________________________

2014 New Years Resolutions of a dish

1. Write More - It hasn't been long, granted, but since I've gotten my new computer I've started keeping a very casual, jot-like journal in the memo pad. It's simple: a date, a time, some kind of list or random feeling or simple description of what I've been doing. I've never been a good journaler, but I can't help but feel like I'm thinking a bit more clearly when I'm writing my thoughts these days.

2. Think Positive - I've been in a rut, and I do believe in the power of positive thinking. I really want to get back into that positive mindset. I think that positive thinking even when it all seems bad can help you get through all kinds of difficult situations, so I'm going to put that belief to practice this year. I'm going to have a good year. ("Year of Penny!")

3. Explore - This year is the year of exploration. I wanna go new places and do new things. I've lived in Japan for about 4 years now all together, and there's just really no excuse for not having seen more than I have. This year I'm going to explore everything and reawaken that childlike curiosity that sent me there to begin with. I think I'm going to start with that damn Sky Tree!

_________________________________

I'm interested in what resolutions you guys are planning for this year and whether you've ever had much success in keeping them? I know it's easy to feel like the world is your oyster at 1:30am on Jan 1st, but there's no telling how things will be come February, right? POSITIVE THINKING.